Ulka Shrikhande, Founder

With 10+ years of cumulative experience in multiple sectors: including academia, non-profit organizations, start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, her personal vision is to help people discover the best in themselves and use it to bring out the best in others. She combines this vision with her expertise in Strategic portfolio & program management to bring together an integrated plan for organizational success.

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Our Philosophy:

Possibilities are infinite with a robust strategy is driven by the right workplace culture. We help you do just that. We deliver integrated solutions for total organizational success.

A robust strategy without the right culture is like trying to run a Ferrari on Diesel

Our Passion Statement- Values

1. Purpose: Use our Strengths to bring out the best in our Clients
2. Passion: Build meaningful connections
3. Strengths: Program and Portfolio Management, Strategic Planning, Leadership Development
4. Hope: Bring Peace to Performance
5. Legacy: Successful Business Strategies led and implemented by highly self-aware leaders

In our role as a Strategic Organizational Consultants, we drive business success through the development and integration of strategic planning initiatives and workplace culture optimization. We are known for

• Strategic planning and execution of portfolio and program management for business PMOs
• Continuous process improvement initiatives
• Cross-functional leadership that drives successful new product development life-cycle from design to launch
• Leadership Development and workplace culture coaching and training programs that empower methodologies to bring peace to performance

Consulting Services

Coaching

• Strengths based conversations for Individuals
• Strengths based conversations for Managers
• Strengths based conversations for Teams
• Strengths based conversations for families to foster personal-professional wellness

Backbone Organization for Collective Impact Projects

What is Collective Impact?

Collective Impact is a framework for facilitating and achieving large scale social change. It is a structured and disciplined approach to bringing cross-sector organizations together to focus on a common agenda that results in long-lasting change.

What is a Backbone Organization and what does it do?

A defining feature of the Collective Impact approach is the role of a backbone organization – a separate organization dedicated to coordinating the various dimensions and collaborators involved in the initiative.
Backbone organizations essentially pursue six common activities to support and facilitate collective impact which distinguish this work from other types of collaborative efforts. Over the lifecycle of an initiative, they:
1. Guide vision and strategy
2. Support aligned activities
3. Establish shared measurement practices
4. Build public will
5. Advance policy
6. Mobilize funding

Training and Development

Our Flagship 4 day Workshop for Business Success
• The Integrated PMO: Designing Strategy using the best in class processes; Bringing it to Life through resonant leadership.
This is a two-fold workshop focusing on:
o Building a Strategic Program or Portfolio Management Office: An essential infrastructure for an agile and scalable organization
o Bringing Peace to Performance- An Organization's Paradigm Shift to transform unused productivity to profitability
Additional Training Programs Influence Inspire with or without Authority
Influencing is one of the unique set of skills paramount to being successful as a leader, a follower or team player. In short, no matter where we are on the hierarchical ladder, having credible influencing skills is non-negotiable. In spite of its acknowledged significance, the skill is often assumed to evolve naturally, with due course of time. Though this may be partly true, in reality, becoming a conscientious influencer is a very active process. How many of us can realistically take the time to develop a deeper understanding of how to become more influential? This seminar will provide the audience with the time, information, and inspiration to:
Develop an understanding of the underlying fundamentals of being a conscientious influencer
Develop the self-awareness and people-awareness necessary to be an influential leader, follower or team player.
Create a plan and its implementation strategy that can be applied in workplaces in teams, because, influencing is not a one-way street.
Mindfulness: A key to personal and professional resilience
Do you dread your next meeting with your client, co-worker or manager? Are you working on constantly aggressive and thankless deadlines? Do you feel like your brain is churning out to-do lists at lightning speed that is almost impossible to catch up with? All these are reflective of accumulation of chronic stress in the body, which, over time results in fatigue, reduced productivity and eventually, loss of passion. In this interactive session, the audience will gain insight into stress management at two levels- 1) self-discovery: understand one’s own drivers, triggers, passions and purpose
2) Self-care: mindfulness techniques to reduce the fight-or-flight responses.
Objective 1: Role of self-awareness in self-care
Objective 2: Five drivers of meaningful work and life
Objective 3: Introduction to mindfulness activities to identify our internal and external stressors and nurture meaningful relationships.
Bringing Peace to Performance: Nurturing Strengths Based Teams
We spend about 40% of our waking hours working or thinking about it. The impact of burnout on our lives is significant. Between working passionately vs working stressfully towards a deadline, which one is likely to have long term performance success? In your answer lies the solution. It is myth that stress transpires growth. It does bring about the sense of urgency when we procrastinate, but that is not growth. In this workshop, discover the power of strengths based teams for sustained performance.
The Four Faces of Leadership
When we say leadership, we are essentially talking about creating the right blend of processes, team empowerment as well as the leader's own personal enrichment. Leadership needs to be viewed as a journey, not a destination; where the journey is just as important as the destination. This webinar will unfold the four different faces of interpersonal interactions based on self- awareness and team recognition, each of which leaves a distinctive mark on the leadership style, and hence, performance, in a given team or organization.
Followers, Where are you?
So now you are a leader... now what? Whether by accident or by choice, you are now leading a team! It might have been under a year or over ten, one of the very fundamental needs of a great leader is having great followers. What does this mean to us in the corporate world? In this story-style tutorial, the audience will
a. Hear about Leadership-follower ship dynamism through a glimpse of servant leadership
b. Discuss ways of using some practical aspects of servant leadership in the corporate setting
c. Explore opportunities to inspire followership

Representative List of Organizations we have worked with

"Really liked the presenter she was very open with sharing her experience and what has shaped her style. Also at the end the take away exercise that each PM can step back and see where they started and where they are after 5 weeks, if they complete the tasks."

Webinar, Fissure Inc

"This may have been one of my top 10 sessions in attending conferences over the past 15+ years! We need more sessions like this one!!!"

Joint Counselor Conference, MN

“Thank you for giving us solid ways to implement this , rather than just theory. Very helpful..”
“Well done Ulka. One of the best webinar presentations I've been part of.”

PMI-Global Virtual Event

Bringing Passion to Performance - Ulka Shrikhande

Bringing Passion to Performance is about transforming workplace productivity by using a simple but powerful principle: Discover the best in yourself and use it to bring out the best in the other”. This is a powerful enabler and drives organic engagement-both at work and at home.
Research indicates that on an average, the annual cost of disengagement in the US alone is estimated to be $450-$550 Billion with 33% engagement, according to Gallup’s 2017 employee engagement report. This is concerning at multiple levels. This book will uncover practical, implementable solutions to optimize team productivity at two levels:

- The Organization’s Structure or the “What” of the company
- The Organization’s Culture or the “How” of the company.

When Strategy and Culture support each other, the possibilities for companies is infinite. Alone, neither will facilitate profit maximization for the organization.
This book will serve as a solid reference to team members and leaders alike. It will take a deeper dive into the “How” or culture of the workplace as a roadmap to success. The book will also include a separate section to provide an overarching research on strategic roadmap implementation plans and how it should integrate with the organizational culture.

This book focuses on developing positive teams, the lowest unit in an organization’s structure and one that is closest to the implementation of strategic initiatives.
Bringing Passion to Performance is based on time tested principles of positive psychology, collective intelligence, self-discovery and self-care, a culture of relentless optimism without compromising quality, and above all, a simple universal experience and fact that the human mechanism is designed to operate optimally when in states of peace and happiness. From our daily life experiences, it is easy to note that we do more of what makes us happy and less of what drains our energy. It is also evident that the state of happiness replenishes our energies and any state of unhappiness or distress depletes it. Given that managing time and energy is the key to productivity, it makes it imperative that improving the work culture can significantly transform workplace productivity in conjunction with robust strategic roadmaps. If you seek answers to any of the following questions, the book is for you.

- How can I be collaborative in a competitive environment?
- To Be or Not to Be (Engaged) at work, that is the question!
- Can a high-pressure culture drive long-term engagement?
- What can I do as a team member, leader or executive of my organization to bring peace to performance?
- Is my annual review a true reflection of my performance? Does my self-evaluation have any true value?
- As a manager, how productive was I able to make my team?
- How many productivity dollars have we left on the table this year?
- Is my organization’s culture truly aligned with the organization’s strategy?
- Do my organization’s strategies value employees as assets or treat them as a liability?